Oh dear HP, what have you done, what Pandora's box have you opened to unleash terror and despair on yourself?
This is all to do with ejected HP CEO Mark Hurd who is joining Oracle as its co-president.
You couldn't get this okay'd as a film script; a famously successful CEO of HP, who made it the largest IT supplier in the world …

Tough!

Muppets from Mumbai

"a famously successful CEO of HP, who made it the largest IT supplier in the world"

By replacing as many people as possible with muppets from Mumbai.

Yeah, great strategy for long-term success. I have no doubt there are some competent IT people in India, but we sure as hell weren't hiring them and anybody that survived his Stalinesque purges is currently looking for greener pastures.

Silly people...

...I think most people agree that the expenses bit (unless pretty huge) was a bit silly and it seems HP just wanted to appear whiter than white, when really no one cares.

Considering what Mark Hurd did for them its pretty foolish to throw it all away over something that could have probably been kept internal. I think its probably the result of an internal power game or maybe someone really dislikes him, easily said...alot of triming went on under his stewardship.

I agree with the above poster BUT while it is like turning an oil tanker...once it is on course there is no turning back.

With Sun, Oracle have a real opportunity to capitalise on many markets it didn't really have access too, and now they have somebody who knows what HPs plans were, not just knows that but has insight into the rivals thinking too and how they might react.

For what is a pittance really Larry Ellison has bagged himself a potential game changer.

Oracle the biggest cobra? Meet hp the dragon. Question is who gets to ride the dragon?

Sorry, but it doesn't really matter that much what secrets Hurd has managed to absorb in between the axe swings, Snoreacle's hardware bizz is still going to have to play catch-up with the equivalent of a rusty and broken bicycle against hp's Mekquake-like machine. I am actually surprised hp decided to sue, there must be some real bitterness between Hurd and some of the hp board. Or maybe they just got really huffy when Larry called them idiots. I thought hp would value the relationship with Oracle more, but then I suppose they have the better relationship with M$ anyway.

As for Hurd being a "genius", all he seems to have done is steer a course already set for him by Carly Fiorina. Carly had already sown up the Compaq merger long before Hurd arrived. Even the most rabid Carly-haters I know at hp will grudgingly admit she changed the company from a stumbling, engineering-led company, unable to break the $40bn mark, into an $100bn IT business machine (they argue whether that was a good or bad thing, but they admit it was her work), hence the rise to the number one slot. Whilst Hurd did a good job of delivering on the process, the painful changes had already been done for him when Carly rewrote that process. The idea that Hurd is some type of deep and original thinker just doesn't fly.

In the meantime, we're going to enjoy the fun of another hp CEO selection! Dave Donatelli has to be in the running, though whether he's number one is debateable seeing as he wasn't considered in the running for the CEO job at EMC. The other top bods in hp all seem to be lacking in width of knowledge and experience, so maybe Donatelli will win through after all. Then again, maybe next time around.

I expect the hp board will go for another external party, hopefully one with vision as well as just the ability to swing an axe. I hear rumours about Marc Andreessen being in the picture but I can't see why. Netscape, whilst visionary, wasn't exactly a big-time success. I also hear things about Tim Cook at Apple, an ex-Compaq bod with real supply-chain experience, but he doesn't seem to have the vision bit. Wildcards? For me, the funniest option I've heard so far would be if hp managed to get Steve Balmer to leave M$. Don't laugh too hard - Balmer's been the CEO at M$ for over ten years, he might relish a new challenge (and a new set of chairs to throw around). Meanwhile, I suspect some Californian hp workers will be voting for Carly in the coming Senate elections, just to make sure she's not available! ;)

HP's next CEO

Not so fast there ...

Good journo copy this - Good Guy gets rough deal - teams up with rival team to fight again for his honour ... The Sweet Taste of Revenge!!! Oh ... and do you sell Popcorn as well? You can almost see Speilberg or Scorsese running to do the deal now.

Fact is that Hurd run out of ideas, big time. He's a cost cutter, pure n' simple - it's what he does, As Hurd's friend Ellison points out, he was involved in intergrating Terradata at NCR - but that was quite awhile back.

Of course, HP has to sue - it would look strange if they didn't. But maybe they don't need to worry :)

Huh? Donatelli??

Not sure if any of you have worked for Donatelli or have spoken to people who work for him, but he is so arrogant and dictatorial that nothing could be worse for HP. Currently, nobody dares tell him the truth because he does not want to hear the truth. So, if we end up having him run the company, we will have HP eventually walking down IT Lane with no clothes on.

Dunn shouldn't have left the HP Board, what planet are you on?

It is "pretexting" not "pre-texting". Your idea that Dunn shouldn't have been sacked is laughable. Poor judgement is inexcusable in a Chair -- a high quality of judgement is one of the things a firm looks to in its Board.

Ehh?

" Even the most rabid Carly-haters I know at hp will grudgingly admit she changed the company from a stumbling, engineering-led company, unable to break the $40bn mark, into an $100bn IT business machine (they argue whether that was a good or bad thing, but they admit it was her work), hence the rise to the number one slot. Whilst Hurd did a good job of delivering on the process, the painful changes had already been done for him when Carly rewrote that process. The idea that Hurd is some type of deep and original thinker just doesn't fly."

I don't hate her per see, only disgusted by her entire career but your whole (imagined) story about her is downright hilarious - Carly Fiorina as deep and original thinker, "rewriting" the "process", changing a "stumpling, engeenering-led" to a "business machine"?

Unless you think business machine & deep thinker = awful costumes, flying private jet and not talking to anyone except telling them "you will bring numbers or you're out", admittedly cheating on corporate income taxes in the amount of ~$14B while laying off ~30k workforce then you're out of your mind about the famously incompetent exec Carleton Fiorina, this archetype of dotcom boom loudmouthed marketing nobody turned celebrity CEO with no operational or any leadership skills whatsoever.

She's a classic example of the crooked, unscrupulous but largely clueless, aggressive marketing monkey, solely selling BS stories about great new heights - look at her tenure at Lucent, most of her work was "creative accounting" and giving away financing for sales, according to Khurana and it was followed by Feds raiding the place for accounting fraud (though it obviously wasn't her single mission.)

Links about Carly "Righ-shoring" "There is no job that is America’s God-given right anymore" Fiorina and her utterly despicable, totally devastating reign at HP: